The Fastest Way to Remove Red Eye in Photoshop

When you’re taking pictures of people or pets up close with a flash, you might get red eye. Fixing it is incredibly easy with Photoshop’s red eye tool. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the tool to fix red-eye with natural results.

Step 1 – Open the Red-Eye Image

Here’s the image that we’ll be using. If you’re practicing, you can load this image into Photoshop. As you can see, there is a strong red-eye effect.

Step 2 – Select the Red Eye Tool

Photoshop’s red eye tool is hidden inside the spot healing brush. In the toolbar, click and hold on the spot healing brush tool to bring up more tools. There, you will find the Red Eye Tool.

Step 3

Here’s where most people make a mistake. I’ve even seen this mistake in popular Photoshop books.

Do not select the pupils. Instead, make a selection of the entire eye. This will give you much better results – typically without any further adjustments. Photoshop uses AI and Machine Learning to find the pupil.

Ever wonder why the selection is a rectangle and not a circle? That’s why.

Here’s a comparison of selecting the pupil vs the eye. The left image is with the pupil selected and doesn’t do a proper correction. On the right is with the entire eye selected.

Step 4

If you find that the results are still not good, you can adjust the Pupil Size setting in the options bar.

There is also a darken amount setting that lets you control how dark/light the pupils are.